A secretive, three-way meeting involving Parliament’s Bureau, its secretariat and MEPs from the budgets committee has paved the way for a controversial increase in the allowance for politicians’ assistants.

Van Rompuy to propose €20bn extra budget cuts

Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, is preparing cuts to the European Union’s long-term budget for research, cross-border infrastructure, development aid and foreign policy in an attempt to strike a deal at next week’s special summit of EU leaders.

Van Rompuy’s staff have been canvassing the member states ahead of the summit on 7-8 February and have come up with around €20 billion in additional cuts to the Commission’s initial proposal. This, they believe, should satisfy the net payers pushing hardest for a lower budget – Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. In November, a first special summit on the multi-annual financial framework for 2014-20 ended without agreement when the net payers demanded some €30bn in additional cuts on top of the €80bn proposed by Van Rompuy.

France has insisted that agricultural spending should be protected, while a group of central European member states led by Poland has demanded that cohesion policy be maintained. Van Rompuy’s current plan maintains spending in both policy areas and instead proposes cuts in areas with weak backing from the member states: research, the Connecting Europe Facility for cross-border infrastructure, and spending on foreign policy and development.

Taken together, the cuts proposed by Van Rompuy would bring the draft multi-annual budget down to just below €1 trillion, including elements such as the European Development Fund that are not formally part of the budget.

Diplomats and officials said that Van Rompuy is seeking assurances ahead of the summit that he fully understands all the national positions.

“He wants to know that nothing he is putting on the table is utterly unacceptable to any one member state,” a diplomat said. “The last thing he wants on the 7th [February] is a bombshell, a member state blocking negotiations.”

A final element in Van Rompuy’s calculation is the rebates that Austria, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden receive under the current system. Van Rompuy wants to eliminate Austria’s rebate, although Denmark has been pushing for a rebate of its own.

Diplomats suggested that Van Rompuy might also try to create additional room for manoeuvre by proposing a somewhat higher figure for expenditure commitments – promises to pay – while making further cuts to the payments foreseen.

Summit schedule The leaders of the 27 member states plus Croatia – set to
join the EU in July – will begin their two-day summit in Brussels on
Thursday (7 February) at 3pm. Following the customary exchange of views
with Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, the
leaders will hold a first plenary session on the EU’s next seven-year
budget, followed by bilateral consultations.

Herman Van
Rompuy, the president of the European Council, does not intend to hold
bilateral meetings with all 28 leaders, as he did in November. His plan,
according to his office, is to complete negotiations on the long-term
budget on Thursday night, leaving Friday for discussions on starting
trade talks with the United States, on the Arab uprisings and on Mali.

Meetings ahaad of the summit: 30 January Herman Van Rompuy, president of
the European Council, met Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary, in
Brussels. He also met Algirdas Butkevicius, prime minister of
Lithuania.

31 January Van Rompuy will meet Mario Monti, prime minister
of Italy, in Brussels. Monti will then travel to Berlin for talks with
Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor.

4 February Van Rompuy will meet
Prime Minister Victor Ponta of Romania in Brussels, while Merkel is due
to meet Mariano Rajoy, prime minister of Spain, in Berlin.

6 February

Merkel to hold talks in Paris with President François Hollande.

Janusz Lewandowski, the European commissioner for financial programming and budget, and leading MEPs oppose this, however, because they fear a widening gap between the commitments made and the money appropriated as payments – the issue which made the negotiations on the EU’s annual budget for 2013 the most difficult in recent years.

Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, warned that MEPs would not give their consent to any agreement that “does not meet the essence of Parliament’s demands”.

“The further the European Council goes from the Commission’s figure, the less likely it will be that Parliament will agree to a compromise,” Schulz said. “An agreement is desirable, but if none can be found, we will operate with annual budgets; that would not be a problem at all,” he said. “We might even be better off with annual budgets.”

Lewandowski also warned that with every billion in further cuts to the Commission’s proposal, the Council would lose “several votes in the European Parliament”.

Strike action

Staff in the secretariat of the Council of Ministers are expected to strike on Tuesday (5 February) in support of their demand that EU leaders should, in their negotiations on the 2014-20 budget, leave intact the heading for the Union’s administrative budget. Three staff unions have notified the Council’s administration of the strike and of their intention not to work extra hours from yesterday (30 January) until further notice.